Changes in the World and the "Clash of
Civilizations" — Within This
Civilization

by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary
Communist Party, USA

Revolution #1, May 1, 2005, posted
at revcom.us

Just briefly, let’s talk about the dialectical relation
between the international and the domestic dimensions of what is
going on, and what has gone on over several decades. Let’s
look at some key conjunctures and nodal points. Where did all
this stuff that the ’60s was part of come from, what was
the underlying basis of that? It was the resolution of World War
2, and what arose out of that on an international scale, and what
became the principal contradiction in the world—between the
oppressed nations of the Third World and imperialism—and
other things we’ve analyzed in connection with that. The
transformations in the southern U.S. were related to
that—the changes in southern agriculture and related
political, social, and cultural changes—and this, in turn,
was related to what was going on in the world as a whole, both
economically but also superstructurally (in terms of politics,
ideology, and culture). There was the civil rights movement that
arose in that context, and the Vietnam war also arose in that
context. In other words, without being mechanical, there’s
plenty of international dimension that has played and ultimately
is playing a determining role in all this.

And then go to the situation today. What sets the context for
all this is the resolution of the contradiction with the Soviet
Union—"the end of the Cold War," as it is
put—by highly unexpected means: the collapse of the Soviet
Union. And then there is superstructural stuff going on in
relation to and in the context of that, in all different kinds of
ways, including different sections of the ruling class in the
U.S. trying to forge new strategies and new consensus. And
it’s true that, as a comrade pointed out, Clinton did try
to bring forward a new consensus; but it was within the same
fundamental framework as has historically existed within the U.S.
What Clinton was doing was objectively bringing greater hardship
for masses of people, but frankly it was not bringing a
"clash of civilizations" right within this
civilization, if you want to put it that way. It was not bringing
two different "irreconcilable"—or, to put it in
different and perhaps better terms, philosophically, two
antagonistically op- posed worlds and worldviews directly up
against each other. And that is what’s being posed now.

*****

Now, the fact is, if there is another event like September 11,
the configuration and the dynamics are going to change
dramatically again. Some people, including some generally
progressive people, left to their own devices, are perhaps going
to join the Christopher Hitchens’ in deciding to cast their
lot with the Christian theocratic fascists of U.S.
imperialism rather than the Islamic theocratic fascists. Now,
that is a metaphor for saying that a lot of the forces who right
now don’t think they can live in the same world with these
Christian Fascists will, in those circumstances (of further
attacks on U.S. soil) be inclined to go under the umbrella of
whatever the government in the U.S. is, even if it’s a
Christian Fascist one, to protect themselves. If we allow that
dynamic to go on, things will become worse, even much worse, than
they are now. And, on the other hand, not only progressive people
but even people like Andrew Sullivan, who is gay, should be
reminded of the NiemÃ¶ller statement (in Nazi Germany: First they
came for the communists, but he was not a communist so he did
nothing...1) and think about
whose wing they believe they can crawl up under.

That was the point that came up sharply in a recent Bill Maher
show—in particular the comments by D.L. Hughley, who
insisted: I believe in Jesus, but I don’t believe Jesus
resides only in the "red states" (where Bush and the
Republicans carried the vote). Andrew Sullivan, who was also on
that show, was getting all puffed up, and so Bill Maher says to
him: "Well, try going into one of those churches in
Mississippi and see how you..." And Sullivan cut in: "I
do belong to a church, and I’m quite welcome in it."
And they both, Hughley and Maher, responded: "In
Mississippi?!" That’s where the gay question and the
Black national question come together—in Mississippi
(literally and metaphorically).

There is a particularity that they’re talking about with
Mississippi too. Andrew Sullivan can find a church in New York or
Washington, but he will have a hard time finding one in
Mississippi. There’s still a particularity to Mississippi.
Malcolm X was right in making the point, "Stop talking about
the South—as long as you’re south of the Canadian
border, you’re south." But still there is another side
to it. There is still a South. My point about the Bible belt and
the lynching belt—how they are the same—is not that
the South is the only place they have ever lynched people, but
there is a point there.

*****

In any case, this is the dynamic that’s in play now, and
it is important to understand that there is a difference between
Hitler getting appointed Chancellor and the Nazis having totally
consolidated power and crushing and eliminating the opposition.
Without being mechanical, that analogy is indeed very relevant to
what is going on in the U.S. now.

I agree with the point (made by another comrade), I do think
Bush actually believes this fundamentalist shit, but he is also
the president of the United States and he can’t
simply be a Christian Fascist. I believe he is a
Christian Fascist, but at this point he can’t
simply be a Christian Fascist. That makes for (and
reflects) another complexity. And there is a difference between
what is the leading edge in the Republican Party and what is the
character of the society overall, at this point at least.

We can’t be reductionist: The leading edge in the
Republican Party is this Christian Fascism, the Republican Party
is the leading party, and right now the ruling party, in the U.S.
and bourgeois politics in this country is increasingly dominated
by one party, the Republicans...so therefore the country is
already fascist. That is not a correct way of reasoning, not
correct methodologically. You can’t go
mathematically—by mathematical reduction—to arrive at
a conclusion like that. In fact, it is not even the case that a
Christian Fascist consensus has won out within the ruling class
at this point. That has not happened yet, and we should not
confuse things. This is not being ruled as a Christian Fascist
biblically based country—at this point.

But there are forces fighting for that who are not going to be
satisfied until that is the way the country is being
ruled. It’s got to be a biblically based, militarized,
patriarchal and male supremacist, and, yes, white supremacist
society—that is in essence the Christian Fascist program.
And, yes, this means that their religious fundamentalist
epistemology must be in command.

There is going to be a battle over what is truth and how do
you arrive at the truth. There is so-called "biblically
based" truth vs. actual truth. There is going to be fierce
struggle over these epistemological questions as well as
political struggle. What is truth? These right-wingers write
things like, "People claim Bush `lied’
"—and they put "lied" in quotes—about
Iraq and WMD [BA laughs]. I mean, here you see clearly that this
is a battle of epistemology. Bush lied without the
quotes, okay?—and everybody saw him do it. But, as another
comrade was pointing out, this is not true in the worldview of
these people who put forward, or take up, this fascist, and in
particular Christian Fascist, epistemology. What Bush says is
true: even if it’s a lie, it is true—or it
doesn’t matter, because it’s subsumed by a larger
"Truth," with a capital T.

*****

This superstructural stuff does matter a great deal. What was
Pat Buchanan talking about in speaking of a great division in
American society that will reassert itself?2 This is a division that has developed out
of all the upheaval of the ’60s—and everything else
that’s happened since. If you read the supplement on the
Clinton impeachment ("The Truth
About Right-Wing Conspiracy... and Why Clinton and the Democrats
Are No Answer")3 it talks about two phenomena at work, in
terms of the problems the ruling class has in promoting
patriotism, especially blind patriotism—people not being
patriotic enough, from the point of view of the ruling class. One
is the ’60s thing—everything that millions of people
learned through that whole experience, which makes them not want
to be very patriotic, or certainly not blindly and
unquestioningly patriotic—and the other is precisely the
’90s thing—all this "gold rush" (get rich
quick) shit makes for a lot of individualism, and it
doesn’t make for much self-sacrifice for the "larger
imperialist good." It isn’t just the one phenomena
that’s being talked about there. We should understand the
nuances, the gradations, the levels, the contradictory character,
the particularity, all of that.

There is right now this whole battle shaping up over these two
different worlds and worldviews. And there are millions and
millions of people, right now, non-religious and religious
people, who are deeply troubled by what is happening—and
there are a lot of people who are religious among the basic
masses who are saying, "We are fucked by this Bush
thing." That doesn’t mean inroads can’t be made
among them by the Bushites and Christian Fascists—we have
been talking about that, and we should definitely be aware of
that. But many among the masses who are religious are saying,
"we’re fucked"—not because Bush is
religious but because of what he is actually doing. The appeal to
religious fundamentalism doesn’t have the same impact, it
doesn’t have the same political effect, right now at least,
on many of these masses, because they have different material
interests, and—without being mechanical
materialist—there is a point to material interests. But it
would be very wrong to think that this religious fundamentalism
doesn’t have an effect on these basic masses.

In fact, there is a tug between some of this superstructural
stuff, and in particular religion, on the one hand, and material
factors, on the other hand. Part of the problem with Thomas
Frank’s reasoning in his book What’s the Matter
with Kansas?—his argument that people who are getting
screwed economically by the policies of the Republicans
shouldn’t be supporting the Republicans, although they are
supporting them now—part of the problem is that actually
many of the people Frank is talking about are present or former
labor aristocrats, bourgeoisified workers, and lower level and
working petty bourgeois. They don’t have a whole history of
being fucked over in this country, by the system, in the same way
as people at the base of society, people in the inner cities and
so on—people who have a whole history of this, so when they
get fucked again, they respond on the basis of that whole
history. Whereas these other people that Thomas Frank is talking
about respond differently, because their history and their place
in society has been and is still different—and part of the
picture is that their self-identity, to use that term, has
involved trying to set themselves apart from the people
who are held down at the base of society.

This is not to argue that Frank is wasting his time agonizing
over what is happening with these strata of people, or that it is
not important to try to win them over to a progressive, and
indeed to a revolutionary, position. But, precisely in order to
do that to the maximum extent possible, it is necessary to
understand, in a thoroughly materialist way, what their social
position is, and what it has been, how that is changing and what
are the, very contradictory, responses this calls forth among
them, rather than just looking at them through some generally
populist lens that fails to take note of important economic,
social, cultural and ideological distinctions among different
sections of the people. For example, within a broad category like
"working people," there are impoverished proletarians,
who are bitterly exploited by the capitalists who employ them, or
are denied employment altogether, at least much of the time; and
there are, on the other hand, self-employed working people and
even small business people who may do some work themselves but
also employ, and exploit, a few others. While the people in all
these categories are in a vastly different position from the
truly rich and powerful ruling class of capitalists, at the same
time there are significant differences among these different
strata among the people, and these differences have a definite
effect on their outlook and how they respond to being further
pushed down.

There is a rich tapestry involved in all this—not all of
it is good, I don’t mean "rich" in that sense,
but a very complex tapestry with a lot of different things
tugging and pulling on different sections of people in
contradictory directions.

Even with the Christian Fascist social base, as we pointed out
in our statement right after the election ("The Will of the
People Was Not Expressed in This Election"), they
have kids getting killed in the war in Iraq, and more of them are
going to get killed as this global war for empire is carried on.
And they have kids who go out of this confined world (of
Christian fundamentalism, etc.), into another world, for example
when they go into the military. Yes, they go into another
Christian Fascist universe within the military, but they
can’t erect complete barriers around the rest of the world
they send these kids out into. It’s more complex than that.
And these strata are going to take economic hits. There is
constantly a complex interplay between the base and
superstructure—between underlying economic factors, on the
one hand, and, on the other hand, political, ideological, and
cultural factors. And we have to approach this with a dialectical
materialist, not a vulgar materialist, method. There has been
enough vulgar materialism in the world, and there is a need to
thoroughly rupture with that.

*****

This configuration within U.S. society could change.
International events could change the character back toward what
was happening at the time of the "New Situation/ Great
Challenges" supplement,4 soon after September 11, 2001. But this
Christian Fascist element is not going to go away. That is the
point I keep coming back to: They are not going to go away, and
they are not going to give up. As other people have said, this is
a monster that’s demanding to be fed. It’s stayed on
its leash pretty much because it’s been promised to be fed.
But it has its own dynamics.

So all this makes for a very volatile situation, and one that
requires us to grasp it—and to act on it, to transform
it— in all its complexity and its potential for an extreme
resolution, one way or the other.

NOTES:

1.
"First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t
speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.

"Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak
up because I wasn’t a Jew.
"Then they came for the trade unionists, and I
didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade
unionist.
"Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t
speak up because I was a Protestant.
"Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left
to speak up."

—Pastor Martin NiemÃ¶ller, imprisoned by the Nazis from
1937-1945. Initially a supporter of Hitler, NiemÃ¶ller realized
too late what the Nazis were all about. NiemÃ¶ller criticized
himself in this now famous quote and gave many speeches
criticizing his fellow clergy, and other progressive people,
for not opposing the Nazis when they had a chance.

2. For
example, in his book The Death of the West, published
after the September 11 attacks, Pat Buchanan accurately
predicted the following: The sense of national unity which
existed right after September 11 would not last; he argued that
there are deep social and cultural and other divides in this
society, and they were going to reassert themselves.

EDITORâS NOTE: This is part of a series of excerpts on various subjectsâdrawn from conversations and discussions, as well as more formal talks, by Bob Avakianâwhich appeared in the newspaper earlier this year. The series, âThe Coming Civil War and Repolarization for Revolution in the Present Era,â is available online at revcom.us and now in pamphlet form from RCP Publications. This article has been edited for publication and footnotes have been added.